


7 Aspects

by aurumstar (shieldivarius)



Series: FFXIVWrite 2020 [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Exposition, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fill, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2020, the encyclopaedia eorzea was consulted muchly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26369125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/aurumstar
Summary: The first imbalance was wind aspected.The firstsuccessfulimbalance. The wind whipped on the Source: felled buildings, devastated crops and forests and domiciles. It shrieked down from mountains, across oceans as it shouted their first victory to the world.Each rejoining reminds Emet-Selch of the end of the world.Fill for FFXIVwrite 2020 prompt "clamour."
Series: FFXIVWrite 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1916263
Kudos: 12
Collections: #FFxivWrite2020 Final Fantasy 30 Day Writing Challenge





	7 Aspects

i.

The first imbalance was wind aspected.

The first _successful_ imbalance. The wind whipped on the Source: felled buildings, devastated crops and forests and domiciles. It shrieked down from mountains, across oceans as it shouted their first victory to the world. 

And victory it _was_. The first rejoining, the first proof that Igeyorhm’s failure on the thirteenth hadn’t boded failure for them all. The first proof of sound concept, true confirmation that they could return Lord Zodiark to power, that they could return their world to its feet after Hydaelyn had brought it to its knees.

In the midst of the First Calamity, amongst the shrieking and the end of a civilization, thirteen of them _celebrated._ They _celebrated,_ because to do otherwise was to listen to the shrieking winds, to watch the buildings tumble.

To relive the beginning of the end. 

They celebrated, because Lord Zodiark’s power grew within them, because surely the Great Rejoining was in their grasp. A few centuries more and they would succeed, they would be returned.

They wouldn’t have to listen to the din of dying that reminded them of the final days again.

* * *

ii.

The second imbalance was lightning aspected.

It was born much like the first, with raging storms and blowing winds causing great disruption in the atmosphere. Dry heat storms that set fields ablaze, that struck trees and buildings alike. That stranded ships at sea and burned them to ash before sailors could escape. Thunderstorms that rolled over burning plains, booming and promising rain that never came and delivering instead driving storms of levinbolts to ruin what soil hadn’t been scarred already by the population.

It wasn’t so long after the First Rejoining, not when held up against all that was yet to come, but longer than any of them would have liked. Centuries had passed, centuries that they had been certain would be more fruitful. Centuries that had borne pointless infighting and fracture and had made Emet-Selch retreat far from his peers in disgust.

Infighting that meant that when the Second Calamity hit, he experienced it on the Source alone. Watched the dark clouds block out the sun, watched people fall and die where they stood, and saw them as robed, masked figures tumbling while lightning spliced the star-strewn sky.

Centuries had passed, but the wound created in the final days, the one torn back open by the First Rejoining, hadn’t healed.

And it would tear open again, and again, and again.

* * *

iii.

The third imbalance was fire aspected.

Fire naturally followed from wind and lightning; it had in both rejoinings, and Emet-Selch had expected when they’d begun creating the imbalance on the Second shard that wind and lightning would proceed in course on the Source. But aetheric fluctuations weren’t so predictable and the fields didn’t burn. Instead the sun grew, came closer and closer to the planet, scalded the earth and made it impossible for anything to grow.

He walked the streets, watched malnourished, too-thin people stumble and fall, and that part was familiar. The stumbling and the falling was always familiar. Bodies on the ground, like uneven paving stones left to lie and rot where they landed.

Arid, dry air coating an entire star.

And above, bold and red and burning in anger, the sun. In his Ascian, aetheric form he could hardly feel its heat, could avoid it if he wanted to, but that didn’t stop its brightness from trying to blind him. And it didn’t stop him from thinking of _Azem._ The sun boiling in its anger as Azem had in the final days. Berating him for his devotion to Zodiark. Screaming at him for trying to find a plan that worked for everyone.

Refusing to give aid.

The Third Rejoining was nigh, none could stop its coming, but Emet-Selch didn’t see it. Instead he retreated to the Rift until it was over.

* * *

iv.

The fourth imbalance was earth aspected. 

Allag had grown into a great empire with little guidance. But he was pushing _millennia_ and Zodiark had yet to regain the power that would repel Hydaelyn once and for all.

Time’s relentless ever onward march exhausted him, but his duties refused even the thought of rest. Some of their number spoke of the Allagans' accomplishments with a sense of familiarly, as though the great feats they’d managed with technology and magic could at all compare to the great achievements of the Ancients. As though anything but the final, Great Rejoining could return them to what they had been.

The sundered they raised to office didn’t understand; even with their memories they were _lesser_ and he didn’t attempt to hold back his derision in dealing with them. The final days had been a great achievement of selflessness. Only the celebrated Amaurotine sense of community had brought about Lord Zodiark. Without it, they would be nowhere. Nothing. Ruined like the civilizations lost in the rejoinings that had come before.

Ruined like Allag would become, with its population rising against its power hungry emperor.

And when Xande grew too cocky, got too big for the breeches of a sundered, mortal soul, the earth split. The earth split, and it swallowed Xande and the tower whole.

The earth split, like the earth had given way after the fires and the winds and the storms. The earth split, opened up, and still, _still_ , the Source didn’t suffer as Amaurot had. Absent was the lava, the flood, the very sky falling. Absent was the raucous clamour of panicked aether filling the air and creating the monsters that would aid in their demise.

Another empire fallen.

But never, _never_ would they ever know the fear.

* * *

v.

The fifth imbalance was ice aspected.

Another fifteen hundred years passed before they were in a position for the Sixth shard to rejoin. If Allag had been the greatest triumph since the Ancients, the years following it were the most disappointing. Sixth fourteenths rejoined and the people of Hydaelyn would rather destroy knowledge than seek it out. Instead of reinventing philosophy, they cowered in fear of the great empire that had come before them and its technology that they didn’t have the minds to understand.

That it took _fifteen hundred years_ for them to start over _again_ infuriated him. 

And it was a blessing when the aether behaved predictably and spilled ice across the earth, freezing everything where it stood.

Still.

He’d hoped ice, at the very least, wouldn’t remind him of Amaurot burning, but he can’t help but make the juxtaposition.

Amaurot in all its glory, in all its wisdom, burned.

The so-called _Fourth Astral Era,_ supposed to be a time of great prosperity, froze instead. A deserving literalism for their stagnation.

Emet-Selch quietly celebrates that rejoining, accompanied only by a bottle of wine, seated in a frigid mountaintop home next to the residents who had been dining when the frigid aethers struck.

Five shards rejoined to the source.

Six parts of Ancient souls mended.

Surely, surely the end was in sight.

* * *

vi.

The sixth imbalance was water aspected.

Wars were easy to feed into. The small people of this star hated one another, refused to view their community beyond borders. Once the War of the Magi had begun, and great amounts of aether started to be thrown around in the form of primitive magics, they scarcely even had to worry about the overflow of the aether on the Tenth shard. But it was _fascinating_ watching as the mages, black and white both, discovered the angry water aspected aether burgeoning through their world and manipulated it to greater and more devastating ends.

The floods were _spectacular_ and they tore open his memories of the lava and the meteors and kept him restless for months, perhaps years after. Waters flooding beyond low lying areas, rising and gushing and sweeping away everything but the highest mountain peak. Stories played back in his mind of the devastation outside of Amaurot, how the voice calling from within had set those in coastal areas frantic, how their aether had driven up the water and flooded their own cities, leaving them refugees by their own hands.

Refugees by their own hands, just as the Mhachi, Amdapori and Nymians were. 

For they unsundered Ascians, time was a straight line. For all else, he had learned, it was an impossible loop. 

* * *

vii.

The seventh imbalance brought the moon to land on earth.

They were _cocky._ Six rejoinings, millennia upon millennia of planning and successes, and the Source seven fourteenths restored. Half restored.

One more rejoining. One rejoining that they hoped would be the Great one. Lord Zodiark would rise up and Hydaelyn and all the champions she could throw in their way would be squashed beneath his great might.

But Emet-Selch didn’t expect the meteors to scorch the backs of his eyelids.

The rejoining was successful, but again he retreated to the Rift, again unable to bear the bleeding of memories as the lesser moon Dalamud fell to earth and gave him unending flashbacks of the meteors landing on the streets of Amaurot.

The monsters, created by the frightened, loosed aether of the citizens they were meant to protect, ripping into and feeding on the bodies of the fallen.

The flames and the asteroids striking the earth, the rubble falling from above. And always, always, the stars sparkling in the skies above when they had a moment’s respite. The uncaring stars, refusing to protect them even as they clung to them in their offices. 

Their uncaring Shepherd, long gone from their lands, refusing to grant them aid.

Seven Rejoinings.

Seven _damned_ Rejoinings and Hydaelyn still reigned. Called forth another champion to strike them down. Refused to surrender her ground even as she clung to the last inch of it.

A familiar champion.

A champion who had been there, opposed to them in the final days of Amaurot.

A champion whose awakening surely meant they faced down the final days again.

The meteors blazed behind Emet-Selch’s eyelids whenever he dared close his eyes.

He was ready for the clamour of the Eighth.

**Author's Note:**

> clamour; a loud and confused noise, especially that of people shouting vehemently


End file.
